The Value of Openness, Inclusion, Communication and Engagement for Science in a Post-Pandemic World

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Isabella Peters
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions ; Communication Sciences
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 495515545

While the coronavirus pandemic’s impacts have been largely negative, and in many instances catastrophic, Covid-19 also served to bring about some positive changes in the way we carry out, communicate, and engage with science. More research has been shared openly, with a progressive increase in the use of Open Access articles and preprints, research data sharing, and public communication of science, particularly in mainstream media. These changes have the potential to foster a more open and inclusive approach to research and scholarship and to bolster our capacity to face present and future societal challenges—but only if the changes persist beyond the pandemic. To better understand the long-term impacts of this shift for a more resilient and informed society, the project VOICES seeks to investigate and share new empirical evidence of the value of opening science, to other scholars and to the public, during and beyond the pandemic. It brings together a trans-national team of scholars with complementary and overlapping expertise in open science, scholarly and science communication, to examine three main questions in the context of the pandemic and post-pandemic period: 1) How is the value of open science discussed and positioned? 2) Who adopted or contributed to open science practices and how? 3) How has the relationship between research and the public been affected by the opening of research? VOICES seeks to understand, document, and measure how the new interplay between researchers, policymakers, science communicators, and the public have affected research, and research’s role in society. In doing so, VOICES aims to develop an understanding of the mechanisms that bring these actors into conversations with one another, as well as of the scientific system itself, so that we can collectively build the resilience of different parts of the system. The overarching goal is to identify concrete ways of ensuring that the gains made during the pandemic with regards to diversity in science, OS practices, SC, and engagement with science persist in the post-pandemic period – so that identified OS-mechanisms can foster an inclusive, sustainable scholarly system, and by extension, a more resilient society.VOICES will yield quantitative evidence about the extent of inclusivity and diversity across actors, outputs, and impacts resulting from OS. Using a novel theoretical framework that considers open research and public science communication as interconnected along a continuum of access, this trans-national team will employ a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods from social and information sciences to demonstrate the long-term value of openness, inclusion, and equity in the communication of science, while warning against any barriers and pernicious effects we identify.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Brazil, Canada, United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin; Dr. Germana Barata; Professor Stephen Pinfield, Ph.D.